Our grandparents used to have many children, as in a society where self-subsistence was prevailing, children would care for their parents in old age. Obviously, many things changed at a rapid pace, and today we save for our retirement ourselves, our children will travel the world while we smoke our pipe on the terrace. In a nutshell, instead of raising children and spending time and effort on a large family, we now have small families (often below the fertility rate), and we spend a lot of effort in balancing our budget to make sure we save enough for our retirement. That is at least what my mom told me to do!

The use of the Wealth Manager rippled through to be appreciated by wealth management companies. One of them, a Hungarian company, even made a video using the Wealth Manager. You can find it here: http://www.bwm.hu/index.php?page=236 (in Hungarian)

Watch the video on how to plan for a property; important facts and figures and how to use the Wealth Manager: video available here

Two years ago, in July 2006, I wrote about financial market transition mechanisms and the perceived nervousness (you can read it here).

Looking back at that article, I predicted that the increase in commodity prices would push companies to use more advanced technologies to cope with the price hikes. It seems that technology to improve working capital efficiency did not really make the first page on the newspapers, but hybrid cars and carbon trading did and it is still a hot topic. But the more important thing that the article touched upon was the amount of money being invested in commodities. Commodity prices continued to soar to all time highs, even triggering riots all over the world concerning food prices.

My long term personal finance without a car

I always wondered if by leasing a car I would be better off than buying cars and having to pay off my car loans. I finally got the answer, without having to make complex calculations with Excel!

With modern communication technologies such as the Internet and mobile phones, the access to information is cheaper, faster and easier than ever. No wonder that financial education is exploding, with many investors going online to do some research on financial products before investing. However, financial education is still in its early stage, with many investors left unaware of the potential returns as well as the risks associated with investments. Government policies devote ever larger budgets to mass financial education programs